


To Shake The Pride of Angels

by The_Cimmerians



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 17:35:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3819031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Cimmerians/pseuds/The_Cimmerians
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU, Kurt and Blaine have never met. Until they do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Shake The Pride of Angels

It was all a blur—the late-afternoon phone call, followed by more phone calls, followed by a frenzy of packing, then taxi, airport, airplane, another airplane, rental car desk (his recitation of his preferences rendered staccato with giant, unstoppable yawns, because by then he was fucking exhausted), followed by a terrible, interminable drive through the fog, running off a combination of his own vague memory and an increasingly-snotty-sounding GPS, to here: the small waiting room of a small hospital in a small town on the opposite coast from where he belonged, grainy-eyed and blinking, and hoping someone called him before he passed out.

“Mr. Hummel? They’re both in room three-nineteen, third floor. You can go on up.”

The woman who told him this was regal, elegant even in her scrubs, her locs twisted into a sizeable chignon, weighty above her long, curved neck. Her glossy tangerine lipstick was perfect for her dark skin. Despite his worry and his weariness these details stood out to him—but he was tired, so very tired, so he just smiled and thanked her, and walked toward the elevator feeling like all of his bones were creaking.

They were awake; they were both awake. Carole looked okay—from the waist up, anyway, just a smudge of a bruise on her cheekbone. Both of her legs were suspended in plaster casts. His dad had a similar cast on one leg, and one on the opposite arm, and a giant brace around his neck, His face was very swollen—his jaw had been wired shut. Kurt didn’t even know he was crying until Carole spoke up.

“Oh, honey, don’t—it’s fine, we’re fine, we’re going to be fine, come here.”

He stood between their beds, Carole’s cool hand in one of his, while he rested the other gently on his dad’s (hopefully uninjured) shoulder. His dad’s eyes were open, pupils dilated to wide, black circles. It looked like he was trying to smile.

“Iszzlrtu.”

Kurt blinked. “He says it’s good to see you,” Carole said, squeezing his hand. Her pupils were also huge. “It’s good to see you.”

The full extent of their combined injuries was sinking in, and Kurt rocked a little on his feet. “You… you did all this skiing? What did you do—ski down Everest?”

“Well, technically, he skied into me,” Carole said slowly. “Then we both hit a tree, then we went off something—I don’t remember much, honestly, other than your father looking kind of shocked by the whole thing.”

They both chuckled a little, because obviously they were hugely stoned as well as idiotic.

“Gnzzlnt.”

Kurt blinked again. “What?”

“He says that this isn’t how he planned to spend his retirement.”

“Zx.”

“It kind of sucks.”

“Strgsm.”

“But the drugs are awesome.”

“Brzzbm.”

“And now he’s saying it’s all my fault for wanting him to be a bronzed ski-bum—oh, and who got who lift tickets for her birthday, Burt? Really—”

“Oh my God,” Kurt said softly. “Listen to you. You’re actually fine.”

“Tlz.”

“Told you so.”

The sound of their mutual chuckling made his eyes tear up again, and then he had to sit down.

***

“She’s fine, Finn,” Kurt said, phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder as he let himself into the dark and silent house. “They’re both fine—stoned off their asses and sassing each other, only dad’s jaw is wired shut, so he mostly makes noises like a spastic cattle prod while Carole translates.” He closed the door behind himself, groping for the light switch. “They’ll be in the hospital for a while, and in the rehab unit after that, but they’ll both walk and talk, and there’s no brain injuries or ruptured internal organs or anything like that. Just lots of broken bones.”

“Jesus. Okay.” Finn exhaled noisily. “But I still think… I mean, I can still come out—”

In the background, Kurt heard a high-pitched wailing start up. “No, Finn—you’ve got a shop to run and a new baby to take care of; Angie and Parker need you more than mom and dad do right now.” He let go of his suitcase and flopped down onto the couch in the living room. “I’ll take this shift, okay? I haven’t taken a vacation in… um, forever; I’ve got the time. Don’t worry.”

“Okay,” Finn said, and Kurt could hear the distraction in his voice—no matter what the topic, when Parker started crying, nothing else got through. “But you… call me every day, okay? And let me know if anything changes. And let me know if you need help. And let me know if—”

“I’ll keep you in the loop, Finn. Now go sing lullabies to my niece and let me pass out, okay?”

“She digs Metallica,” Finn confided mellowly, only slightly less pride in his voice than if he’d announced she’d won a Nobel for most awesome baby.

“What a remarkable child. I’m hanging up now.”

“Okay. Thanks, Kurt.”

“Shut up. Good night.”

Kurt faceplanted sideways into the couch, thought about actually stretching out and lying down, and passed out before he could even finish thinking it.

***

Culture shock. The town his parents had retired to was quiet, coastal, tiny, and deeply Californian—and about as far away from New York as it was possible to be while remaining in the same country. He’d been here twice—once when dad and Carole bought their house and settled in, and once for Christmas—but they’d been brief visits, and he hadn’t seen much.

There wasn’t much to see. The downtown area was probably considered ‘quaint’, but it gave him cause to wonder if you were still allowed to call yourself a ‘township’ if you didn’t even have a Starbucks. He settled for a place called The Greener Bean instead, taking refuge in going through the texts that had piled up on his phone in order to more easily ignore the eyes of the locals that invariably settled on him—people who seemed to have unanimously agreed that jeans and flip-flops constituted reasonable attire for every occasion, whether that was walking the dog, getting a morning coffee, or conducting a business meeting.

There were several texts from Unique, panicking about being ready for the winter show—he ignored them. He’d left everything in great shape, and with every show it was always the same: it always looked like they’d never make it until suddenly, through the magic of endless sweat and agony, they pulled it together. She would be fine. There were a couple texts from Sue, bawling him out for leaving her with nobody but ‘that high-strung heifer’, three weeks before ‘the most important fashion show of her career’. He ignored those too—he’d been the buffer zone between those two for too long, it was time for Unique to step out of his shadow, and time for Sue to realize that he wasn’t the only person on the planet who could translate her insane ranting into something that actually worked.

“Grande nonfat mocha,” he said brusquely to the sullen boy behind the counter when it was his turn, and walked over to the part of the counter marked for drink pickup. He had five texts and four missed calls from Finn—of course, Finn didn’t sleep any more, so that probably wasn’t surprising. He answered the last text: Called hosp. this morning, all is fine, headed there now, talk soon.

The girl behind the giant, copper espresso machine mumbled out his order, sliding a cup onto the counter. He tucked his phone in his pocket and took the cup, ignoring her half-resentful, half-curious stare. He put a little something extra in his step as he turned around, and it probably would have made for a very effective exit except for the guy who was standing directly behind him, blocking his way. Nothing ruined a high-fashion sashay like that awkward side-to-side shuffle one was obliged to do when two people were trying to step aside simultaneously, in the same direction.

Only then his eyes made it up past the sockless, loafered feet he’d been mentally cursing, and all shuffling came to an abrupt end, because he was all of a sudden face-to-face with a guy who was ridiculously gorgeous—and staring right at him with that look of stunned awe he saw on the faces of all the locals, only not quite the same—no, no, not the same look. Not the same look at all. No.

“Hi,” the guy said softly, wide brown eyes and long lashes and a beautiful, kissable mouth and oh.

“I have to go,” Kurt said through numb lips, and hightailed it to the street.

***

He had lists. Lists that had been days in the making: care of the house. Care of the garden. Care of the restored vintage Camaro that had started as his father’s retirement project, and then morphed into a needy, demanding child once the restoration was complete. Management of two absurdly crowded social calendars—seriously, the two of them were supposed to be retired, did they have to have so many friends, accept so many invitations, sit on so many committees?

“Rlndh.”

“We’re old—not dead.”

“You have no idea how much I’m beginning to regret that.”

He knew it was hard for both of them during the times when the medication wore off, before they were allowed their next dose. He’d read their charts and learned the schedule, and always tried to be there during the bad times, to give them updates on small news, to distract them with whatever he could. Sarcastic bitchiness seemed to work much better than solicitous self-sacrifice did, on both of them. Fortunately, he wasn’t about to run out of that any time soon.

Finn had sent him a video under the heading PARKER DANCES TO METTALICA (Kurt carefully refrained from any comment on how Finn had at least spelled his daughter’s name correctly), which consisted of a pair of teeny fists attempting to punch a cameraphone while Finn laughed like a maniacal idiot in the background. Unsurprisingly, the two wounded soldiers both loved it. Kurt forwarded it to their phones while their evening dose of pain meds was being administered, and then said good-night.

***

There was no food in the house.

Strictly speaking, that wasn’t true—over the course of the few days he’d been here, several of his parents’ annoyingly numerous friends had dropped by after their visits to the hospital, offering advice and commiseration, and bearing gifts of food. But since all of it seemed to be casseroles topped by canned deep-fried onions, he stood by his statement that there was no food in the house.

Thai Palace blinked its neon at him from the largely deserted evening streets of downtown, and he supposed he should count himself lucky he’d found an establishment that stayed open past eight o’clock.

A sign at the front advised him to Wait To Be Seated, so he grabbed a menu from the front desk and perused it while he waited. A young girl with glossy black hair pulled back into a ponytail ghosted up to him. “Table for one?”

He looked at the room beyond the desk, and for the first time realized that the gorgeous guy from the Greener Bean was right there, seated alone in a booth on the left side of the dim room, mouth open and chopsticks motionless, staring right at him. It was a shock.

“Sir?”

“No. I mean, no thank you; just food to go, please.”

He ordered, paid, and then waited outside until the puzzled waitress stuck her head out of the door, bag in hand. He walked home quickly, one foot in front of the other, his eyes focused intently on the sidewalk, promising himself that he would either get to the farmer’s market in the morning, or learn to like canned fried onions.

***

He went to the farmer’s market, but the Greener Bean Hottie was already there, judiciously assessing the organic heirloom tomatoes. Kurt drove to the closest available chain grocery store, and almost missed morning visiting hours at the hospital as a result.

He saw the guy at the auto parts store. At the gas station. At the ice-cream parlor. At the pharmacy. In desperation, Kurt went to the tiny town park and snagged a bench in the shade, ignoring the glares from the decrepit locals whose turf he’d obviously invaded. It was a nice, restful spot, right up until Alpha Gay Dreamboat jogged by on the path down at the foot of the hill—shirtless, gleaming, curls in careless sexy-sweaty disarray—Kurt sat frozen until the guy vanished around the turn and into some trees, then collected his things and walked quickly towards his car, wondering if being a shut-in was as bad as it looked on television.

***

He was furiously texting Unique while furtively ducking into the Greener Bean for some absolutely necessary caffeine, silently congratulating himself on finally having made it all the way through his daily errands without incident—only then there was a capital-I Incident, because the guy was coming out as Kurt was headed in, and okay, he probably should have looked up from his phone before shoving the door open, because he’d knocked the poor guy sprawling.

“I am so sorry,” was all he managed, tossing his phone in his bag and ready to offer a hand, but the guy was already up, back on his feet and nodding companionably to the alarmed-looking locals.

“I’m fine, really—I thought I’d get the door for you, I thought you saw me, I… uh. Hi. I’m Blaine Anderson.”

Sand shifting, eroding under his feet. He felt it, safety and certainty slipping away from him. Fuck. “Kurt Hummel.” He shook Blaine’s smooth, warm hand, saw the contact register in those beautiful, amber eyes. “I’m really sorry.” That much was true, on any number of levels.

“Let me buy you a coffee,” Blaine said, and what with the shifting sand and the loud voices in his head telling him a bunch of perfectly reasonable things about why this was a horrible idea, everything else kind of went by the wayside until they were at the counter. Blaine’s eyes were wide, aimed right at him, and warm enough to drown in. “Grande nonfat mocha, right?”

Kurt blinked. “You know my coffee order?”

Blaine blushed a little. “I… um. Yeah?”

Okay. “Okay.” Kurt nodded at the boy behind the counter, ignoring the eye-rolling waves of teenage ennui coming their way, ignoring the stares from the locals, ignoring everything… but not quite able to ignore Blaine’s hands opening his wallet, extracting bills, stuffing the resultant change into the tip jar. Sexy hands, strong-looking and masculine, but elegant—Kurt shifted his gaze resolutely to the wall behind the counter. The soup of the day was vegetable barley. Fascinating.

Blaine led the way to a small round table in the corner. “Is here okay?”

“It’s fine.” He sat down. “Although I think it should’ve been me buying you coffee, seeing as I nearly brained you on my way in.”

“Maybe next time,” Blaine said softly, and Kurt swallowed, hard. He’d chosen the wrong seat—Blaine was facing the window, and the light made him look like he was glowing from the inside. “You’re new in town, aren’t you?”

“Only temporarily,” Kurt shook his head. “I mean, I’m only here temporarily. My dad and my stepmom live here—they had a skiing accident, and they’re both in the hospital. Oh, they’ll be fine,” he continued when Blaine’s remarkable eyes grew solemn, “really, considering that they were both behaving like teenaged idiots and they could have easily killed themselves, it’s not that bad.”

“Oh. Well… I’m glad they’re going to be okay.” Blaine sipped his coffee. “It’s nice of you to come and take care of them.”

“Well it was either me, or my stepbrother Finn, and he’s got a wife, a new baby, and the family business to run—the full-bore American Dream, you know, not a lot of room to get away.”

“So… you’re not married, then?”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “I’m gay.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t be married.”

“I’m not married.”

“Okay.” Blaine swirled his cup, and drank. “Boyfriend?”

“No.” Interesting, what seemed to matter on this side of the world. “You?”

“Nope.” Blaine put his cup down.

There was a pause, not entirely uncomfortable, but… intense. Kurt let the moment build, sipped his mocha, and licked his lips. It struck in Blaine’s eyes like a spark, and Kurt couldn’t help smiling. “So. What do you do?”

“Uh,” it seemed to take Blaine a moment to find his way back to the conversation. “Oh. I’m… um. Queer studies, at the UC.”

Kurt tilted his head. “You’re still in school?”

“Oh, no. I’m, uh… I’m an Assistant Professor.” The bizarre bowtie affinity suddenly made so much more sense. “How about you?”

“I’m a junior designer at a fashion house in New York.”

Blaine’s eyes darted to Kurt’s anodized steel unicorn lapel pin like it suddenly made so much more sense. “Really? That sounds… exciting.”

Small talk. He wasn’t used to it. More culture shock. Minutes ticked away, and he answered Blaine’s questions and asked a few of his own, and it was all just so… odd. But finally the coffee cups were empty and the sun was moving on—visiting hours at the hospital would start soon, and it was time.

“So.” He lowered his voice. “Where do you want to go?”

Blaine’s eyebrows drew together. “You mean… in my career? Well, I really love my students, and I think I—”

“Not your career, Blaine.” He leaned forward. “You’ve been staring at my mouth since we sat down. We’ll need to go somewhere.” He tilted his head and half-lowered his eyelids. “Unless you want me to blow you right here.”

Blaine choked and looked away, his hands tight on the edge of the table while his face turned alarmingly red. “Oh. Uh. I… no, that’s not, it’s… Kurt—”

The bottom dropped out of Kurt’s stomach, and his own face went so hot he was suddenly lightheaded. “Oh, God.” He’d read it wrong—the whole thing, he’d read it completely wrong, and that had never happened before, and he was a fucking idiot. He stood up. “I have to go.”

“Kurt—”

“Thanks for the coffee, Blaine.” He almost knocked a chair over in his haste to get out the door.

“Kurt—”

He kept walking.

***

“Sthrg.”

“He’s right, honey—something’s wrong.” Carole reached for his hand and squeezed it. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” it was automatic, and clearly neither one of them believed him. “Really—I’m… I guess I didn’t sleep that well last night, that’s all. I’m fine.” He squeezed her hand, and let go. “Now, tell me what they said about moving you to the rehab unit—really? Tomorrow?”

It took some time and effort, but in the end he got them steered back onto the safer ground of the horrors of physical therapy.

***

His throat was tight and bitter-tasting, but he still had himself more or less under control when he sank down on the living room couch and touched number one on his speed-dial.

“I messed up.”

Unique sighed. “What’s his name? Or did you bother to ask?”

Kurt closed his eyes. “His name’s Blaine—and I don’t mean I messed up in the way I usually do. I mean… I really messed up.”

“He’s straight?”

“No, he’s—”

“He’s married?”

“Well… I don’t think so. He’s… Jesus. He’s beautiful.”

“Boy, when are you going to learn that a little beard-burn between your shoulderblades isn’t worth the price of admission to the sadness rodeo? You fall apart and I put you back together, or I do and then you have to build me up from scratch, over and over and—you promised me; we promised each other! You swore off—”

“Look, I didn’t—I stayed away from him, okay? I saw him and I stayed away, I did, I—”

“So what happened?”

“Well… then I nearly knocked him unconscious with a door, he bought me coffee, and I offered to blow him.”

“Uh-huh. Really great job staying away, Kurt—”

“He didn’t want a blow job.”

“…he. …are you sure this isn’t a straight guy?”

“I think he just wanted to… get to know me.” Kurt swallowed, hard. “I think… I think he actually liked me.”

“Oh, honey—”

Kurt sighed, leaning back into the couch cushions. “Anyway, I blew it—in every single way except literally. So don’t worry, okay? I just… needed to talk to you about it.”

There was a silence, a quiet commiseration. Their friendship had initially blossomed through their shared love of fashion and music, had deepened through their shared affinity for sarcasm and mockery, but had been cemented in the trenches of romantic disappointment; their experiences remarkably similar despite their different situations. They were both wounded soldiers, trying to keep out of the fray.

Kurt sniffed a little. “How was I supposed to know, ‘Nique? How was I supposed to tell the difference between a… a decent guy and, and—”

“And someone who thinks you’re good enough to fuck but wouldn’t want you on their arm in public? Damned if I’d know—I didn’t think that other kind existed.”

“Neither did I.” Kurt closed his eyes and let his head lean back against the cushions, then sat up straight when there was a knock at the door. “Oh, hell—another visit from my parents’ vast social network. Look—stay on the phone with me, okay? We’ll talk work—it’ll give me an excuse to take their damned casserole and then shut the door.”

“Speaking of work…” Unique started in on a rapid-fire tirade that involved Sue and menopause and humorless textile dealers and poor-quality zippers and the intransigence of seasonal hemlines but mostly Sue, and Kurt um-hm’ed along right up until he looked through the peephole in the front door.

“Oh my God.” He turned around and put his back to the door, his heart hammering in his chest. “It’s him.”

“It’s…?”

“It’s Blaine. And he…” He straightened up and looked again, just in case he’d imagined it. He hadn’t. “And he brought flowers.”

“He what?”

“Seriously—like, the biggest bunch of irises and lilies I’ve ever seen—”

“Okay, Kurt—don’t panic—”

“I’m not—I’m—oh, hell. What do I do?”

“Just… be smart, baby. I don’t want to have to reassemble you on a cellular level, okay?”

“…okay.”

“…Kurt?”

“Yeah?”

“You need to hang up and open the door now.”

“Okay.”

A pause. It stretched out. “Kurt!”

“Okay, Unique. Bye.”

Blaine was pink-cheeked, shuffling a little on the front step. “Hey—there was only one Hummel in the white pages, so I thought I’d take a chance.” He smiled, and held out the flowers. “These are for you.”

It was the first time he’d ever gotten flowers. There must be something, something you were supposed to say when this happened. “Thank you. They’re beautiful.” That was it. He stepped back, held the door open. “Would you like to come in?”

***

“This is a nice place,” Blaine said when Kurt led the way to the living room. “Comfortable. Homey.” It sounded like he meant it.

“You have no idea how hard I’ve worked to keep myself from redecorating,” Kurt said dryly, taking the flowers to the kitchen, hunting through the cupboards for a vase. “But I think my parents might flip out if I were to disturb the whole blue-collar-funky-functional thing they have going, so…” He found a massive glass bowl, and put it to use. “Would you like something?” he added, raising his voice to carry over the running water. “There’s, um, I can make coffee, or, I think, there’s tea—”

“Water?” Blaine asked, and Kurt nearly squeaked—Blaine was right behind him. “Just water would be fine, thank you.”

They ended up at the kitchen table, and once again Kurt had chosen the wrong seat—right for him, in that he was in the shade, but the sunshine coming in through the wide kitchen windows rendered Blaine distractingly perfect, from his glossy half-tamed curls to the flushed, clear pink of his lips. Kurt sighed inwardly.

“I’m really sorry about yesterday—” he said, at the same moment that Blaine cleared his throat and spoke. “Kurt, I’m so sorry—”

“You? Blaine, you have nothing to apologize for. I was—”

“No, I really think I do, because you—”

“There’s nothing, I just… I was—”

“—you were right. Kurt. At least a little.”

“Um.” Okay. His face was hot. And he should shut up now. “I was?”

“Yeah. Yes. I…” Blaine looked down. His eyelashes were criminally long. “I was. Looking. Staring. At your mouth.”

“Oh.”

“Because I couldn’t stop wondering… what it would be like to, uh, kiss you.”

“Oh.” His heart. It was doing fucking acrobatics inside his chest. “You were?”

“Yes. Which was… forward of me, I know—”

Kurt couldn’t help it. He started giggling. “Uh… maybe not so much, given what I thought you were thinking about.”

Blaine grabbed his water and chugged it, ice tinkling in the glass, his cheeks brilliantly flushed. “Oh, I probably would have gotten there eventually—my mind seems to be extraordinarily undisciplined when I’m around you.”

Kurt tried not to be flattered by that. He failed. “Really?”

Blaine nodded, and put his glass down. His mouth was damp, plush, probably icy from the water. Kurt imagined it would warm quickly—warm, like his eyes, like his skin. Kurt shivered imperceptibly. “Blaine.”

“Yes.” Low. Husky. Warm.

“You can—if you want to kiss me, you can.” Saying it was somehow both terrifying and a relief, at the same time.

“I…” Blaine blinked and looked away, pressed his lips together, and shook his head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Oh, God.” Kurt leaned back in his chair. “You are straight.”

Blaine looked at him quizzically, then shook his head again. “I’m really not.”

Kurt took a deep breath. “Married?”

“No, I’m…” He ran both hands through his hair, then over his face. “Kurt. I’ve never had sex.”

Kurt blinked. “What?”

“I’m a virgin.”

Kurt felt like his eyes were so wide open his eyeballs might tumble out of their sockets. “What—I mean… how old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Oh my God.” His head seemed to be buzzing, floating. “You’re a smoking-hot twenty-seven-year-old Queer Studies Professor virgin?”

Blaine actually cracked up, snickering and blushing and covering his eyes with his hand. “Jesus, when you say it like that it sounds like a bad porn-movie premise.”

It was not a good idea to laugh. Laughing was wrong, and probably hurtful, and—fuck. Kurt put both hands over his mouth and snorted semi-delicately, which made Blaine laugh harder, and then both of them broke down, leaning on the table and having mild hysterics, setting each other off again every time things started to calm down.

But then it was over, and he and Blaine were staring at each other—and just like that, Kurt realized, they were friends.

Amazing.

***

“But… how is that even possible?” He’d raided his dad’s stash of hideous light beer, and he handed one over before twisting the top off his own, sipping, then shuddering. “I mean—no offense, Blaine, but you are, like, sex on a stick—”

“This is supposed to offend me?”

“Oh, shut up—and how, I mean, how…?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Blaine said lightly, shrugging. “Except… indirectly, I guess. When I was a teenager, in high school, I was just… waiting. For the right guy.”

“And?”

Blaine smiled, a little sadly. “He never showed up. Guess he had better things to do.”

Kurt eyed him. “His loss.”

Blaine blushed again. An actual, technical, blushing virgin. God. No wonder he was so… weird. Sweet. Weird. “Well, thank you.” Blaine drank, and sat back down at the table. “Anyway, after that I was in college, and then I went through this phase where still being a virgin made me feel like some kind of freak—”

“I remember that phase.”

“Right? So I was, uh, determined to do something about it, only every time I started to, it felt… wrong, like I was doing it for the wrong reasons—reasons that were wrong for me. Like I was treating sex like… like something that didn’t matter, when…”

“When it did matter,” Kurt said softly, the buzzing in his head gentled to a faint ringing, his throat close and tight, from memory, from regret. “Because it matters.”

“Right.” Blaine looked at him. “You figured that out too?”

“Not exactly,” he said quietly, and left it at that.

He saw no judgment in Blaine’s eyes, nothing but kindness, understanding—an understanding so profound it made his breath catch in his throat. Blaine nodded. “So I stopped trying. I went back to waiting—for the right man, for the right time. I… it was close, once; this was the summer before I started grad school, and I met this guy, he was… smart. Funny. Cute. We had a great time together. But he’d been accepted at the Sorbonne, and I asked… we decided to wait, see if the long-distance thing would work out for us.”

“What happened?”

Blaine shrugged. “It didn’t. He met someone during his first week, and a week after that, he stopped answering my texts.”

“I’m… sorry.”

“I’m not.” Blaine shook his head. “Not the right guy, not the right time.” He shrugged again. “It’s okay; I don’t think I’m really cut out for the long-distance thing, anyway.”

Kurt sipped some more tragically horrible beer. “Blaine.”

“Yeah?”

“Why did you bring me flowers?”

Blaine looked down, smiling a little. “Because… I wanted to. Because I saw them, and I thought they were beautiful, and… I think you’re beautiful, and I wanted to apologize, and I wanted to… I really wanted to see you again.” Blaine’s voice was quiet. “I wanted to see if we could be friends.”

“Friends.” That was… stunning. Disappointing. Also oddly wonderful.

“That’s… yes.”

“But you were thinking about kissing me.”

Blaine grinned. “Hey, I’m a virgin, I’m not blind.”

Kurt swallowed. “Can you be friends with… with someone you’re attracted to?”

“I don’t know—can you?”

“I… guess we’ll have to find out.”

***

Mornings, they met for coffee at the Greener Bean. They went to the farmer’s market together. Cooked for each other. Went for walks. Watched movies. Talked books. Kurt took Blaine to the rehab unit with him, and watched with half-rueful amusement while Blaine charmed the pants off everyone, staff and patients alike—which was wonderful, except that after Blaine said his good-byes and excused himself to finish the chapter he was writing, Kurt had to deal with the fallout.

“No,” he said calmly to Carole’s speculative look, not even waiting for her to ask, “we’re not. We’re just friends, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh,” his father said slowly, staring at Kurt, careful of his newly-unwired jaw. “Seems like a nice guy, though.”

Kurt ignored the inference. “Great. He lives three blocks down from you—you can add him to your dizzying assortment of acquaintances, and then he can bring you a damn fried onion casserole after you both break your necks bungee-jumping.”

***

“What do you think of these melons?”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “Aesthetically? They’re too big for your frame.”

Blaine gave him a puzzled look, then burst out laughing so loudly that the dred-headed, patchouli-scented fruit vendor behind the table gave them a look like he was about to tell them off for harshing his mellow. “I mean, for sorbet,” Blaine murmured, holding the melons at a slightly-less-suggestive height, frowning down at them. “I want to make some sorbet for your folks—a little lemon, a little honey or agave, maybe some of that fresh mint over there—”

“Do not curry favor with my parents, Blaine,” Kurt snapped, taking the melons away from Blaine so he could buy them—and make the damn sorbet—himself. “They’re already picking out china patterns for us.”

“Oh,” Blaine said softly, and blushed a little. But then he smiled. “Well, at least they like me.”

“Of course they like you,” Kurt said acerbically. “You brought them flowers and homemade buttermilk-banana bread, talked to my dad about his tricky timing-belt problems on his fucking Camaro, and told Carole you’d help weed her garden until she can do it herself. They’re probably having adoption papers drawn up on you as we speak.”

Blaine eyed him speculatively. “Do you think homemade tiramisu would seal the deal?”

“You’re a horrible person, Blaine Anderson,” Kurt responded tersely. “Now get out of my way and let me buy these damned bribery melons.”

***

“That’s. Uh. A really nice jacket.” The guy next to him—blond, bland, unremarkably handsome—said.

Kurt kept his attention on the business at hand. “Thanks.”

Being spoken to at a urinal was never good news. It meant that the guy talking to him was going to try to either beat him up, annoy him with hearty camaraderie to prove he was Down With The Gays, or…

Kurt finished, zipped, and looked up. The guy was flushed and sweating, staring, licking his lips and then clearing his throat. “Do you suck, fuck, or both?”

Or… that.

Kurt sighed. “Look, I’m not interested—”

He cut off as Blaine pulled the door open and walked into the bathroom. “Hey, Kurt—was it a latte you wanted, or a mocha?”

Mr. Blond-Bland-And-Sweaty whipped out the door, and was gone. Blaine watched him go, then turned back to Kurt.

Kurt went to the sink and washed his hands, keeping an eye on Blaine in the mirror, quirking an eyebrow. “You forgot my coffee order?”

Blaine leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms. “No.” He examined one of his cuticles, picking at the edge of his thumb. “The guy left his wife, toddler, and baby-in-a-stroller waiting in line, and followed you in here like he was chasing the Holy Grail.”

“Mm. Wouldn’t be the first time. Or the last.” Kurt flipped off the water and grabbed some paper towels. He kept his tone deliberately light. “So. Did you come to rescue me?”

Blaine snorted mildly. “Yeah, like you need rescuing. No.”

Kurt wanted to turn around. He didn’t. It was easier, somehow, looking at Blaine in the mirror while Blaine stared at the floor. “Jealousy?”

“I… yes, I think… yes.” Blaine looked up, then, and when their gazes locked Kurt felt it like a touch, a soft finger stroking down his spine. “I know I’m not… that we’re not. But… yeah. I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Kurt said, finally turning away, tossing the paper towels in the trash and pulling the bathroom door open.

***

It was a blustery, rainy night when they watched The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and that turned out to be a mistake on several levels, because Kurt (as he usually did, when he watched it) finished with his heart pulverized to a dangerous level of tenderness, and Blaine (as he usually did, when he watched anything) finished the movie by not seeing the end of it. He passed out on the couch with his legs draped over Kurt’s lap, one arm up above his head and the other hand splayed low on his stomach, his head turned to the side enough to show the corded line of his neck, his mouth open just the tiniest bit—lost in sleep, utterly beautiful, so trusting, and so very dear as he’d become in just a short time.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world to stretch out over him, gently kiss his open mouth like Sleeping Beauty, to put an end to what had to have been an unimaginably long wait, to seduce him softly and sweetly into the world—open your eyes, Blaine. Time to wake up.

Easiest thing in the world.

Instead, Kurt slid imperceptibly out from under the warm, muscular weight of Blaine’s legs, covered him with a blanket from the hall closet, and confined himself to one last look before he turned out the lights, and went to bed.

***

He got used to it, except for the ways in which he didn’t. It was wonderful, except for the ways in which it wasn’t. It was a new experience: he’d never actually had a guy-friend before, but to his surprise (and delight, and yes, disappointment) it actually worked. There was a sense of defiance he was amazed to discover in himself; a steely determination to be exactly who he was—no more, and certainly no less, and he would have suspected that he was trying to push Blaine away from him—except that all it ever seemed to do was bring him closer.

Confounding. Maddening. Incomprehensible. And completely irresistible.

“Good morning,” Blaine said, sliding into his seat at the Greener Bean across from Kurt with his precious medium-drip held close—he looked half-asleep still, squeaky-clean and freshly-shaved and bow-tied and as dreamy as ever, gazing at Kurt like he was the sum total of everything necessary to make it a good morning indeed.

“I’m really going to have to sit down and question whatever it is about me that makes me keep working for a sadist,” Kurt said dryly, tapping his phone off and slipping it into his bag.

“Sue on the rampage again?”

“Try always.” He swirled his mocha, drank, and sighed. “She made three models cry at rehearsal—and that was just the guys.”

Blaine was staring at him, his hands, his face; drinking him in. It was one of the things Kurt couldn’t quite get used to. “Are you sure you’re doing what you want to do?”

Kurt shrugged. “Well, yes—for now. I mean, of course in the future I’d like to have my own house, my own label. But that’s… it’s risky, and it takes money, and solid experience and an established reputation.” He sighed. “I have one of those things. I’m working on the other two.”

“I think you’ll make it,” Blaine said easily, leaning on his hand. “I’ve seen your sketches—you’re brilliant.”

“This from a man who thinks the height of sartorial elegance is a sweater-vest,” Kurt murmured, but he felt his face go hot anyway—it was impossible not to be pleased.

“You love my sweater-vests,” Blaine drawled, one eyebrow quirked, and it wasn’t flirtation except for God it totally was, only Blaine didn’t know it, and Kurt could have vaulted right over the table and climbed into Blaine’s lap and kissed him breathless—except they didn’t do that.

***

“Don’t wake him,” Carole whispered—probably needlessly, given the ear-splitting volume of dad’s snores. “He had a late night.”

“Pain?” Kurt asked quietly, picking up the chart at the end of his dad’s bed—no extra meds requested last night, vitals normal. He put the chart down.

“Just a little—it’s his back. Now that we’re down to ibuprofen, with the therapy, he’s starting to feel it.”

“And how about you?” Kurt asked, sitting down on the edge of her bed, patting her arm. “Are you planning to sell all your worldly possessions to score black-market oxycontin once they let you out of this joint?”

She snorted softly. “How much do you think my Springsteen vinyl collection would get me?”

“Not enough.”

“Well, there goes that plan.”

They were quiet for a moment, until dad let loose with a snore so loud Kurt thought he heard the windows rattling in their frames—and then they were both stifling giggles, and Carole was squeezing his arm and shaking her head, wiping her over-bright eyes until they had themselves under control.

“So,” she said, smoothing her bedcovers. “No Blaine this morning?”

Kurt shook his head. “He teaches Monday-Wednesday-Friday. He’s in class.”

She gave him a look. “Your father and I like him, very much.”

Kurt fought off the urge to sigh. “I know. I like him, too.” He swallowed. “But we’re just friends.”

Carole looked out the window, one cool hand still resting on his arm. “You know… for a while—like, for years—I think your father was terrified of the day when you would show up with an actual boyfriend on your arm.”

“I know.”

She squeezed his arm a little. “He’s not. Anymore.”

“I know.”

Her eyes were kind and calm and right at him, and God only knows what he would have ended up saying—but just then his dad snorted himself awake, and all of a sudden Kurt had pillows to adjust and the therapy schedule to review, and two people to bitchily harangue into eating what looked like the world’s least-appetizing breakfast.

***

“I mean… God, ‘Nique, what the hell was I supposed to say? How the hell am I supposed to explain to my parents that I’ve never had an actual boyfriend, because while there are plenty of guys who want to get some on the down-low, nobody wants to actually date a nelly, sissy f—”

“Don’t say it, Kurt—do not say it.” Unique’s voice was stern. “You shut your mouth right now, son. You know how this works—you start calling yourself names, then I get started thinking about how I’m too much woman for half the men I want to date, and not woman enough for the other half, and then there’s vodka and tears and then I wake up on somebody’s bathroom floor—and I have ten fittings tomorrow and that can’t happen, so shut. Up.”

Kurt shut up. He sniffed a little. “I miss you.”

Unique sighed. “Not as much as I miss you, baby boy. Speaking of which—how are your folks doing?”

“Good—they’re good. They come home in two days,” he said, and then had to close his eyes, because that brought on a whole rush of other thoughts, some of which he definitely was not ready to have.

“And how about Doctor Virgin McSweetBooty?”

Kurt sighed. He never should have given in to her relentless demands for cameraphone pictures. “Unique—”

“Tsk. How you have not tripped and accidentally landed on that man’s cock is beyond me—”

“’Nique!” he shrieked, scandalized, but still, a little dizzy. He had to close his eyes.

“It’s a damned shame, that’s all,” she said primly, and then she giggled, and Kurt didn’t want to giggle but he couldn’t help it, and then they were both snickering uncontrollably and really, he missed her, he missed his life, it was a good life to go back to because it was his, and she was in it, and he really, really needed to remember that.

***

“I’m going to make coffee,” Carole said, shuffling gingerly through the door on her crutches. “Who wants some?”

“I can make it,” Kurt protested, but she craned over her shoulder to look at him, holding up her finger.

“No, you won’t—the whole time I was gone all I could think about was my own kitchen, and real coffee, and the radio playing and your father bellowing about something out in the garage—I missed it. I promise I’ll call you if I need help.”

So he went back out to the car instead, collecting luggage since Blaine already had his dad’s good arm over his shoulders, helping him shuffle-hop with the bulky brace on his leg towards the front door. “Need my help?”

“I got it,” Blaine said tersely, and his dad’s lips were pressed tight but he looked… okay, determined, but not in too much pain, so Kurt brought in the luggage and then unpacked things into the downstairs guest bedroom and bathroom, which his parents would have to use for a while.

When he was done he found Blaine standing in the hall, grinning, peeking around the doorway that led to the kitchen.

“Looks like Fred and Ginger are glad to be home,” Blaine whispered. The coffeepot was burbling away, the crappy portable radio on the windowsill over the sink had been switched on, and dad and Carole were down to one crutch each, holding onto each other and awkwardly rocking to a slightly scratchy recording of La Vie En Rose.

“Sure,” Kurt retorted. “It’s all fun and games until someone slips and ruptures their spleen—”

“Oh, Kurt—look, they’re fine. I think they’re adorable.” Blaine smiled archly, and held out his hand. “Come on, live a little—cut a rug with me.”

He was already snickering—cut a rug? Jesus, Blaine—and then they both were, half-suppressed giggles while Blaine twirled him dramatically, pushing him out before reeling him back in, swaying and then turning and then twirling him again, out and in, and then into a dip—but that was when all the humor went out of the situation, because they were abruptly face-to-face, maybe two inches apart, and Edith Piaf crooning about how it felt to be held in a man’s arms suddenly seemed a lot less melodramatic. Blaine stopped laughing and his smile vanished, melted away until he was wide-eyed and serious, staring at Kurt with the kind of look that Kurt could barely cope with when they were on opposite sides of the room, let alone this close.

Blaine pulled him up slowly (Kurt had nothing to do with it, he was frozen, he figured he was lucky he was able to stand), and like it was automatic or natural or any number of things that it absolutely was not, Kurt slipped his arms around Blaine’s neck, and Blaine’s arms slid down to his waist, and just like that they were—they were there. They were dancing.

Warm breath soft on his neck, and Kurt let his eyes drop shut. It wasn’t sex—it wasn’t sexual, but his heart was thundering crazily and he could only take the shallowest breaths and moving was like moving through molasses-slow time, his nerves tingling and Blaine’s hand on the curve of his spine, hot even through his vest and shirt and undershirt. He was dizzy. He was… found and lost, at the same time. He felt brand-new within himself, out over the edge of something, deep in uncharted territory—but not alone.

The music faded. A strident voice enumerating the deals to be found on used cars succeeded it. Kurt swallowed, and opened his eyes. “The song’s over.”

“Kurt.” Blaine looked like he was coming out of a trance, his eyes heavy-lidded, hazy.

Kurt licked his lips. “Yes?”

“You’re—” Blaine looked away, blinking rapidly, and his cheeks turned pink. He laughed a little, and rubbed one hand through his hair, then over the back of his neck. “I, uh. I should probably go. Let you all have some family time.”

You’re family, Kurt didn’t say. “Okay.” He didn’t trust his mouth, didn’t trust anything that wanted to come out of it. “Thanks—for helping to bring them home.” That was safe enough, he supposed.

“You’re welcome,” Blaine said softly, and then he was gone.

***

“Forgive my choice of words, baby boy, but give it to me straight—am I losing you?”

“What?” He floundered, propping is phone between his ear and his shoulder while he curled up on his side in the bed. “You mean… no, Unique, of course not—you could never lose me.” He sighed. “No, I just had to tell you because… well, because I did, but… no. I love you, and I love my job, and I need to work in fashion, and I need to live in a city and not… not three blocks down from my parents in a tiny town that thinks Birkenstocks are a reasonable footwear choice.”

“That doesn’t mean you and Professor Hotness couldn’t have a thing—”

“He’s already said he’s not cut out for a long-distance relationship,” Kurt mumbled. “And truth be told, I don’t think I’d be so great at it, either.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his chest a little. “I don’t know how to have a relationship, ‘Nique. I just know how to—”

“Uh-uh-uh—stop that right there, my friend.”

Kurt swallowed. “And I can’t…”

“Kurt—”

“I can’t do that with him—”

“…Kurt.”

“—not when he’s waited twenty-seven years for the right guy, the right situation to come along—”

“Kurt.”

“What?”

Unique’s voice was steady, calm, certain. “It’s time.”

Kurt closed his eyes. “Time…”

“Look, I can hear you falling apart from all the way over here, Kurt—and it’s only gonna get worse the longer you let it go. So I’m telling you this as your friend, as someone who cares about you: it’s time to rip the band-aid off the boo-boo, okay?”

His throat was tight, too tight to talk, at first, until he cleared his throat. “Time to come home?”

“Time to come home.” Her voice was sad—so sad for him, so gentle with him, but no less certain.

“I…” he broke off, sniffed, then opened his eyes and stared at the wall. “Yeah. Okay.”

***

He was staring at his flight confirmation on his phone when it rang. Blaine. He answered, but to his utter horror, he couldn’t actually speak. He tried, and failed, his throat choked with… well, everything.

“…Kurt?”

“Here,” he managed, and coughed a little. “Sorry, Blaine—frog in my throat. I’m here. Hi.”

“Kurt?” Blaine’s voice softened immediately. “What is it? What’s wrong? Is it your parents? Is everything—”

“I just booked my flight home—I’m on a red-eye the day after tomorrow,” Kurt said in a rush, one hand pressing deep into his stomach. “And… no, nothing’s wrong. I’m… my parents are fine. Everything’s fine.” He bit his lip, and had to stop there.

Silence. Silence. Silence. Then, breathing—a shocked-sounding intake of air on the other end of the line. “Oh.”

It was one word, just one quiet word. It sounded like a closing door. “Blaine—”

“I…” Blaine’s voice sounded scratchy, and he cleared his own throat. “Sorry. I… just wanted to ask how everyone was doing, and… and I wanted to tell you… I’ve got some, um, school stuff, that I need to catch up on, so I’ll be… I’ll be busy—”

“I understand.” Kurt closed his burning eyes.

“Okay.” A pause. “’Bye, Kurt.”

“Goodbye, Blaine.”

***

For dinner he made broiled hoisin shrimp, fresh wilted baby spinach and mushrooms with soy sauce and Meyer lemon, and salad. He did an excellent job of preparing it, and a terrible job of pretending to eat it.

“Look,” his dad said finally, putting his fork down. “Are we gonna talk about this?”

It was the kindness, the compassion in his dad’s voice—perfectly discernible under the brusque words—that made him turn away, just for a moment. “We’re really not,” he said finally, steadily, picking up his own fork and determinedly eating a shrimp.

“Honey,” Carole said softly.

“Nope,” he responded, spearing some radicchio like it had personally wronged him. “We’re not.”

“Okay,” his dad said, both hands up, fingers splayed. “Just… I just want you to know that you can talk to me.”

“Or me,” Carole said.

“To us,” his dad finished. “Any time.”

Kurt swallowed. “I know.”

“I mean that—any time, Kurt.”

“Okay.”

“We love you.”

“I know.” Please stop please stop please stop…

“Okay.”

***

He’d booked the airport shuttle for a midnight pickup: it was easier than doing the rental-car waltz, since he was the only person in the house fit to drive. He was packed and ready to go, only maybe he should have saved that for last, because both his dad and Carole were out like a light by ten, and then he was alone in the living room, listening to the faint sound of his dad’s snores from the guest bedroom, listening to the hallway clock ticking the minutes away, listening to the great rush and roar of nothing that filled up his head, his heart—all the empty places.

Too many empty places.

He took his dad’s truck—just a drive-by, that’s all he meant to do; it was stupid, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it, so he would do it and then he would come back and feel stupid and that would help him put his mind firmly on other things, non-stupid things, things like work and his friends and his crappy apartment that he nevertheless loved because it was his home—

Home. Blaine was home. And awake, apparently—all the lights were on, and Kurt could see a shadow moving from room to room behind the curtains, pacing.

Kurt drove slowly up to the curb, and stared at the ignition key for a good thirty seconds before he switched the truck off. In the sudden silence, he could hear music—The Eurythmics’ Love Is A Stranger, blasting from the tiny craftsman house, louder than Blaine ever played anything.

He watched for some time, and couldn’t quite believe it when he got out of the truck. When he closed and locked it. When he walked up to Blaine’s front door. When he rang the bell.

Nothing for a while, and then the music volume went down dramatically. It seemed like a long wait before Blaine opened the door—light and music streaming out, and Blaine, backlit, leaning in the doorway. He was red-eyed, messy-haired, and unshaven, holding what looked like it was definitely not the evening’s first glass of scotch. His tie was undone, his collar undone, and his shirt untucked. No sweater-vest in sight.

Not-Blaine. Blaine. “Blaine—”

Blaine caught him by surprise, reaching out to grasp his wrist, pulling him into the house. Blaine pushed the door closed and then stepped close, crowding him up against the wall in the entryway. “Kurt.”

“Blaine, I think you—”

“I don’t think,” Blaine said, as if disagreeing with him. “I… I don’t think I can be friends with someone I’m attracted to, Kurt,”

His heart, squeezed like a rag. “No?”

“No.” Blaine stepped away and Kurt took a breath, but Blaine only put his glass down on the bookshelf on the other side of the hall, then came close again. “I don’t think we’re friends.”

“Blaine—”

“We’re not friends, Kurt.”

“We—”

“Say it,” Blaine insisted, and he wasn’t dangerous or threatening but… begging, beseeching him, desperately needing something from him, looking up at him with wide, luminous, bloodshot eyes. “Say it.”

Kurt licked his lips. Swallowed. “Okay, Blaine; fine. We’re not friends—”

Blaine’s mouth cut him off, hungry and peat-smoky and full of teeth and need, dark and desperate and Blaine was making some kind of noise—not sobbing, not quite, but close. Kurt told his hands to push Blaine away, but he might as well not have bothered because even drunk and disheveled and miserable Blaine fit against him perfectly, crushing him into the wall with muscle and hardness and want, and he felt so good.

“This is a bad idea,” he husked when he could, then groaned embarrassingly loudly when Blaine burrowed into the curve of his neck, tongue and teeth, sucking there, marking him.

“Doesn’t matter,” Blaine whispered, shaking his head, dragging his teeth over Kurt’s sensitive skin towards his ear. “Nothing matters any more, Kurt—”

“You don’t want this—”

Just a growl, and then Blaine had his hand, drawing it down over rock-hard stomach muscles, making him shiver, down to Blaine’s bulging fly, and Kurt’s eyes fluttered madly and then closed. “You have no fucking idea how much I want.”

Pushing into his palm like some kind of blind, needy thing, Blaine was hot and hard and huge, shoving against him below, panting against his neck above. If there was one thing Kurt was equipped to deal with, it was this, so even though it made his eyes sting and his breath choke up in his throat and his chest spike with sudden, cramping pain he did it, did what he did best, got Blaine’s pants open with a fast flick of his thumb and one firm tug, got Blaine’s hard, leaking cock in his hand and started stroking.

Blaine collapsed against him, and Kurt steered him back, away from the wall, over to the couch and down—never letting go, never missing a beat, because he knew what he was doing and it was all just so easy, straddling Blaine’s lap and letting Blaine feed on his open mouth while he worked Blaine through it, riding the swells when Blaine thrust up and then swiveling his way down, his own body aching and neglected in a way that was so terribly, horribly familiar to him, a bitter pleasure pooling low in his belly from unsatisfied want.

Blaine didn’t last long—he shuddered, grunted, groaned out something that Kurt thought probably had the word ‘beautiful’ in it and then came all over both of them, and even as far outside of things as he was Kurt’s vision whited out for a second—Blaine’s open, moaning mouth and his gorgeous cock, and the sultry smell of scotch and sweat and come—but then Blaine had him by the shoulders, had him pulled close, and Blaine… was crying, rocking a little with his face mashed into Kurt’s shirtfront, hanging on and crying softly, like his heart was broken, like something in him had just been broken.

Kurt choked, waves of recrimination and self-loathing backing up in his throat, his own erection abruptly wilting. He needed words, needed to find a way to say everything he needed to say, everything he needed Blaine to hear, but all he could do was sit there, petting Blaine’s head with the hand that wasn’t coated with come, trying to swallow and trying to talk and trying to take it all back—trying and failing, failing, failing.

“Blaine,” he managed finally, with a voice that sounded as scratchy as sandpaper. “Blaine, I’m—”

Blaine snuffled quietly against his shirtfront, murmured something, and then fell back, snoring very faintly.

“Blaine,” Kurt said, and oh, he was losing it—his voice shaky, his eyes spilling over, his hands on the back of the couch squeezing so tightly that he had to make himself back off before he tore through the upholstery. “Blaine, I’m sorry.”

Nothing. He lost track of time, then, for a while, staying as close as he could while all the tears he couldn’t stop worked their way out, rocking softly against Blaine’s warm, lax body, waiting for his self-control to come back to him.

***

He’d hesitated, debated, and agonized, but in the end, he left a note on the coffee table:

We are friends, Blaine

Which is why I hope you can forgive me

***

Back in New York, it took nearly a month of utter and complete silence from Blaine before Kurt was willing to admit that he’d either been wrong about the first thing, or out of luck on the second. It took another three weeks after that to persuade himself that it didn’t really matter which it was.

The end result was the same.

***

His fucking phone rang as he was desperately searching for his Christopher Kane blue-green scarf, which was the only one he owned that went with the shirt he needed to wear today in order not to feel like a complete waste of humanity. He let it go, and let it go, and then lunged out of his tiny closet and grappled for the damn thing, lost in the folds of his unmade bed.

“Look,” he said without even bothering to glance at the screen. “I know—I’m late, I know, I never used to be late and now I’m always late and I’m sorry, okay? I’ll make it up, I’ll come in early tomorrow and stay late tonight, I’ll—” he trailed off because there was breathing—not Sue’s huffs of rage, and not Unique’s calm and somehow sarcastic respiration. Familiar, though, and when it hit him like a fist in the stomach he checked the screen on his phone and then sank down on his bed, his face suddenly red-hot. “Blaine?”

“How badly did I hurt you?”

“What—”

“I need… I need to know, Kurt. I don’t remember.” Blaine’s voice was tight, low. “I remember pulling you inside, pushing you against the wall, I remember… I remember you saying that it was a bad idea—but that’s all I can remember and I know damn well that’s not all that happened so how badly did I hurt you?”

“Oh, God—no, Blaine,” his words were chasing each other, spilling out with no control. “No, no, no—it wasn’t, it wasn’t like that, not at all, I could have… I could have stopped it, any time. I didn’t. I didn’t, and I’m sorry, and I—”

“Really?” Blaine’s voice cracked. “I mean—I need you to tell me the truth, Kurt, I was… out of my mind, I hadn’t slept in two days and I was drunk off my ass and I know I… I wasn’t—”

“It was a mistake, Blaine,” Kurt said, closing his eyes and leaning against his headboard. “A mistake for both of us. I never should have… I should have made you stop. I could have made you stop, could have stopped myself from—but I didn’t.” He sniffed. “I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“You… you’re sure?” A thread of hope wove through Blaine’s voice, and his breathing ratcheted up. “I didn’t hurt you?”

“You didn’t.” The rest was a push, but he had to say it. “Not the way you’re talking about, no.”

A deep, deep sigh on the other end of the line. “Okay.”

“Blaine?”

“I’m sorry, Kurt—for the ways I did hurt you. I never… that’s never what I wanted.”

“I know.” His call waiting beeped at him, and he pulled the phone away from his ear for a second. Sue’s snarling face flashed from the bottom of the screen. “Look—Sue’s on the other line; I’m late for work, again. But I… I really want to talk to you. Can you hold on?”

“Of course, yes.”

He switched lines and hauled his bag up over his shoulder at the same time. “Do not bellow at me, Dragon Lady,” he said in his iciest voice. “Yes, I am late. No, the world as we know it will not end because of it.” He shrugged into his coat and made for the door. “Now, do you want to waste my time calling me a bunch of creative insults that I know damn well you stay up all night inventing, or would you to like me to apply myself to actually traveling to that sweatshop hellhole you have the temerity to call a fashion house?”

“Well,” Sue drawled. “Somebody certainly ate their power protein breakfast this morning—did you bother to get his name?”

He didn’t have a response for that, because he’d made it to the front door, and he’d opened it—and Blaine was on the other side, phone in hand, staring at him, and then every hair on Kurt’s body stood on end, and he thought he might actually be having a heart attack, the pounding in his chest was so fast.

“Sue.”

“Yes, Trampoline?”

Blaine’s eyes. He’d forgotten, somehow he’d forgotten that looking into them was like drowning, in the very best way. “I’m not coming in today.”

“What? You—”

“Sorry.” He turned off his phone, and slipped it into his bag.

He stepped aside, holding the door open. “Come in.”

***

They needed to talk. They really, really needed to talk. But Kurt was still stunned and going on autopilot, so of course he offered to take Blaine’s coat and backpack, and when Blaine handed them over their fingers brushed—just a little, but both of them were staring at each other and both of them jumped, Blaine gasped a little and Kurt felt his cheeks glow hot, and the next thing he knew Blaine had reached up, reached out, cupping his face so very lightly, warm brush of his thumb over Kurt’s cheekbone making him shiver.

“You are so incredibly beautiful,” Blaine said, words a low, murmured rush like he couldn’t help it, and Kurt dropped Blaine’s coat and backpack with a whish and a thud and then wrapped his arms around Blaine’s neck, and kissing him was something he felt all the way down, like his heart was offered right there on his lips, a thousand birds taking flight in his chest. Blaine’s mouth was soft and sweet, open and warm, wet—and what twisted through him was heat, heat and something else, something that stopped time, something that drove out the world except for the two of them.

When he finally pulled back, Blaine swayed a little on his feet, his open mouth gasping.

“Blaine?”

“Okay, it’s… uh. Sorry. Could I sit down, please?”

“Oh, God.” He ushered Blaine towards the couch. “What is it? What’s wrong? Is something—”

“It’s fine,” Blaine said, but he had his face in his hands, and it was hard to hear him. “This is just a… a delayed reaction, I’m pretty sure—because you’re the one, Kurt, you’re the right guy—and I figured it out just in time to ruin everything, and it wasn’t like I could just shrug it off and say ‘oh well, guess I’ll wait for the next right guy to come along’—because there’s no next, Kurt, there’s just you, you’re it, and I thought I’d, that I’d… I never thought. You’d kiss me. Like that.”

Kurt sat down. It was very good planning on his part, he thought dimly, to put this couch right here in his living room, perfect for those moments when you suddenly really needed to sit down. Very practical of him. His skin felt warm. Tingling. Everywhere. “I’m the right guy?”

Blaine drew his hands down his face. They were shaking visibly. “The right guy. The only guy. For me. Is you.” He took a breath. “I hope… God I hope you can love me back, Kurt; because if you can’t, or don’t, my life is really, really going to suck.”

He took one of Blaine’s hands. They were holding hands. He looked at their fingers, tangled together. It looked shocking, miraculous, amazing. “I love you, Blaine.” Saying it was like taking a hit of potent pot smoke, heady and dizzying.

Kisses that were soft, tender, simple; tiny open-mouthed sips, he could feel Blaine breathing him in, drinking him in, exploring and experiencing him slowly, savoring his mouth as if it was all new—

Of course. It was all new. He drew back a little. “I’m not going to push you, you know,” he murmured, his voice husky. “I won’t. I promise.” Blaine licked his bottom lip, evidently chasing the taste of him, and Kurt shivered. “I know that this is… that you’re… but there’s no rush, okay?”

“Say it again.”

Blaine’s hands were still shaking. Kurt squeezed them. “There’s no—”

“Not that.”

Oh. “Love you—”

Blaine was on him, climbing on top of him, pressing him flat into the couch cushions with a kind of tender ferocity and kissing him deeply and trying to touch him everywhere and—oh, jeez—already hard, rocking against Kurt’s rapidly-swelling erection like he couldn’t help himself.

“Blaine—”

“Bed.” A fast, weightless, giddy swoop and he was up, up with his legs wrapped around Blaine’s hips and Blaine’s strong, hot hands anchored under his ass.

“Uh… wha?”

“Bed—where’s your bed?” Blaine’s voice was low, throaty. “God, Kurt—please tell me you have one, help me get there before I come in my pants—”

“Door—there—” He was barely hanging on, sliding deliciously up and down over Blaine’s cock with his own, careening a little and floating, his lips seeking out the soft skin under Blaine’s ear while Blaine groaned and staggered towards his bedroom.

Okay, so Blaine apparently wasn’t so much the delicate-petal kind of virgin as he was the I’ve-been-waiting-twenty-seven-years-for-this-and-FUCK-I-am-done-waiting-so-give-me-all-of-you-right-now kind of virgin, and wasn’t it just his lucky day?

“Jesus, yes,” Kurt huffed when Blaine landed on top of him on the bed, writhing up into Blaine’s hands, up into his heat and hardness, and clothes came off with haphazard chaos, one shoe flying by over his head, Blaine’s shirt unbuttoned down to his navel and Kurt’s dick was strangling in his pants watching his own pale fingers trace down through the soft hair leading to Blaine’s navel, one of his cardigan sleeves trapping his other wrist.

“Too many shirts,” Blaine murmured darkly between hungry, urgent kisses, groping his way through layers, and Kurt solved the problem by hauling all of them off at once, bare to the waist and cool air and warm skin, and Blaine moaned when he looked down at Kurt’s nipples, his eyes heavy-lidded, sliding down to kiss and lick, taste and suck and nip, palm sliding down between Kurt’s legs and Kurt pushed his head back into the pillows, shamelessly rubbing up against Blaine’s hand.

“Oh, fuck, Blaine—”

“You’ll tell me, right?” Blaine was grappling his jeans open one-handed, still rubbing his cock, and honestly, he expected Kurt to talk under these circumstances?

“Tell… what…”

“If I do—if there’s something you don’t want, if I—”

“Oh, God—” He let his eyes close, felt the pounding of his heart in his throat as he swallowed. Firsts all over the place, and he couldn’t stop his hips from pushing up. “Blaine, please—suck me?”

He’d never asked for that before, never said those words before—never felt the desire to, but the distance between them, the distance he usually relied on to keep his own distance just wasn’t there, not between the two of them, not with Blaine. Terrified and elated, saying those words was like nerves laid bare, leaving him shivering. Blaine moaned softly, trailing off into a frustrated growl, working his pants and briefs down with no finesse, leaving them tangled at Kurt’s mid-thigh and then just going for it, swallowing and sucking and then moaning again, fingers tight on Kurt’s hips and tongue hot on his cock and wet, wet, wet.

Kurt cried out softly and put both his hands over his face, undone. Blaine was intent, messy-fast and determined and devoted, learning him, greedily taking everything he had to give, making deep, pleasured sounds that made Kurt’s blood rush in his veins. Everything hung suspended, and Kurt was sinking—it wasn’t that he’d never been on the receiving end before, but usually it was just a few blistering seconds, a perfunctory courtesy offered by a few generous men on their way to fucking his ass. Not this—not anything like this, eagerness and need and wanton desire that made his heart feel like it was melting.

There was no need to hold him down, now; he couldn’t move, and Blaine was sucking him and lightly stroking his balls, petting his quivering stomach. Kurt had to bite his lips, press his hands harder over his eyes, his mouth, still unable to stop the obscene, soft, stunned noises he was making—and little by little, he stopped trying. His hands crept down on their own by slow degrees, touching Blaine’s hair, face, lips—verifying the scorching intimacy and sweetness of Blaine’s mouth on him, and he was shaking so hard his bed rattled in its frame.

It was a dare, or a series of dares—how long he could let it go before he got himself back under control (back to what was safe, what he was used to), how long and how much he could take before he called a stop to it (because he would—of course he would). How long he could let his gasps for air and soft, unfettered cries fill the room, how long he could luxuriate in Blaine’s hot, adoring mouth, and in the end he shocked himself by not stopping, by daring to cradle Blaine’s head in his hands and push against his wickedly wet tongue and come, throbbing and spilling out and curling up around Blaine’s shuddering, twitching body.

“Oh my God.” He was past words, there were no other words possible to say, to express, everything—any of it—so he settled for that, a soft, stunned-sounding whisper, nearly entirely lost under Blaine’s deep, half-strangled groans. Blaine had him, arms tight around him holding him close, kissing him once, hard, before letting him go, before Blaine eased back onto his knees, staring and him and panting, his eyes wide, his mouth wet and swollen.

“Blaine.” Kurt tried to move and couldn’t, tried to sit up and couldn’t, and eventually just gave up and laid there while Blaine worked Kurt’s tangled clothes down his legs and off, then stripped himself, unconsciously gorgeous, his movements languid now, twisting Kurt’s heart when he used his boxer-briefs to mop up the come spattering his own stomach. “Blaine.”

“Yeah?”

He really should care. He really should care that he was nude and sprawled like a shipwrecked body washed ashore, flushed down to his navel and damp with sweat, undoubtedly a mess. He didn’t. “It would be really spectacular if you would fuck me right now.”

Blaine slipped into his arms—oh, naked, perfect, warm, strong—blushing, smiling a little. “Wow. It sounds so romantic when you say it.”

There was giggling, and then kisses, and Kurt got lost in kisses and closeness, in the heat and hush of Blaine’s focus, in the unimaginable indulgence of time—another first, to feel like he could take time, not rushing to put an end to everything and get away before he was the one being left. They were rocking against each other, rolling over and then back again, hands everywhere and their legs tangled together, and the scratch of Blaine’s hairy calf against the inside of his thigh made his eyes roll up in his head, made him twitch and shiver and spread his legs wide, reaching down to where Blaine was hard again, silk-skinned and hot and slippery and big… he looked up to find Blaine watching him, looking amused and aroused in equal measure, and just like that he was blushing all over again. “Um. Objectifying you is romantic, right? When I do it?”

“Sure,” Blaine said, grinning, then moaned a little. “It’s also hot.”

He rolled Blaine onto his back and swayed up onto his knees, dizzy and hard, sweating a little, wanting. Blaine stroked his thighs, his waist, his hips, eyes wide and warm, that look—that adoring, marveling look Kurt could never get used to before, the same one he thought he would never get enough of now. “Probably easiest if I do this,” Kurt said, leaning forward enough to pillage his bedside drawer for condoms and lube. “Faster, too; I know what I can take—”

“Kurt.” Blaine took his hand, the one with the lube in it. “I… I’m not in a big rush.” His erection twitched hard where it was pressed against Kurt’s balls, and they both gasped a little. “Well, most of me isn’t. Let me?”

So he did, and it was another tectonic shift, from the purely practical to something that was somehow sacred and profane at once, watching Blaine get off on touching him, seducing him into pleasure, teasing him, and they weren’t even fucking but soon both of them were sweating and both of them were groaning, moving against each other. Kurt couldn’t stop his hips, couldn’t stop fucking himself on Blaine’s fingers, his cock throbbing like a beating heart and his balls aching.

“Please,” he managed, and Blaine hummed a little and used his free hand to tug Kurt down into a kiss, invading his mouth and pressing deeper into his ass and Kurt almost lost it, abruptly on edge and almost-coming and oh—

“Don’t, okay?” Blaine whispered, like it was some kind of reasonable request. “Not yet.”

“Then stop teasing and fuck me, you jerk.”

“Oh my God I love you so much—” Then they were laughing, both of them rocking against each other, some kind of unknown rubicon passed and on the other side of it they were working together, condom and more lube and scoot down and lean up and kiss me kiss me kiss me, smiling kisses morphing into moaning kisses and Kurt could hear and feel his own heartbeat up in his throat, and he closed his eyes and threw his head back and let himself sink, spitting himself on Blaine’s cock, the stretch and ache of it, inside, deep, right where he needed it, perfect.

It broke him a little, being filled, like it always did, but Blaine was with him, right with him, holding his hips and fucking up into him gently, squeezing him with shaking hands, soft, stunned cries until Kurt kissed him again. They found their way forward together slowly, little by little, shifting and slipping in sweat, tongues tangled in soul-deep kisses. Kurt had to close his eyes again when they stung—so used to stealing pleasure out of defiance, out of sheer stubborn will—but Blaine lavished and loved him, stroked his cock, his thighs, his nipples, his neck, his ass, reveled in him and fucked him deeply and groaned his name like his heart was breaking and gave him everything.

“I’m gonna come soon,” he breathed, and Blaine shuddered against him, then pulled him close and rolled on top of him between one second and the next, spreading him out and pushing him into the soft, cool bed.

“Let me,” Blaine said against his lips, “Kurt, please—” and he really wasn’t clear on what Blaine meant—only then he got it, when the strength went out of his muscles and Blaine worked a hand between them, going slower, deeper, more deliberate, and stripping Kurt’s leaking cock lightly in time with his thrusts.

“You want,” Kurt managed, “…you want to make me come?”

“Yes—yes. Let me… let me—”

A cliff edge, a tightrope—Kurt stepped out with no hesitation, sinking and sighing and winding his arms around Blaine’s neck; letting go, letting Blaine take him the rest of the way. Blaine worked him and stroked him and twisted them together, groaning into his mouth, slowing down the closer they got, drawing it out. Exquisite. Torturous. Less stimulation instead of more, and it pulled him inexplicably deeper, so close there was nothing but their breath, and the heat of their eyes on each other, and he was coming apart so quietly, no exploding fanfare to mark the crashing down of barriers in him, the turning over, giving over of trust—just soft moaning to express the quake at his core.

Blaine kissed him and he came, a flutter and then a tide and then a rushing, annihilating flood, clinging desperately while Blaine came in him, gasping into his mouth and throbbing inside the pulse of him, like a heart enfolded with another—inside. Inside. Where it was so unbelievably good.

***

He’d had three partially-sampled pints of different Ben & Jerry’s flavors in his freezer (his favorite, Unique’s favorite, and the one they shared together whenever woe was at an all-time high). Now he had three empty ice-cream cartons scattered over his bedside table, a spoon stuck to his lower back somewhere, and a shocking inability to feel at all revolted by how sticky he was. He kept snickering, and Blaine kept kissing him, and the whole thing was just scandalous or ridiculous or awesome or all three, he couldn’t quite decide.

“Live with me.” It came between one kiss and the next, his response eclipsed by Blaine’s cool, chocolate-sweet tongue.

“Blaine,” he said, but Blaine was already shaking his head.

“Not where I live now—I know, you can’t. But… here, or somewhere else—wherever you want to be—”

“But…” rollercoaster rush, it was so fast. “Your job, you can’t—”

“I’ll teach where I can, in my field if I can, or if I can’t I’ll keep publishing, researching, lecturing—I can volunteer. Kurt.” Blaine paused, sucking a spot of Cherry Garcia off his thumb. “I don’t care if I have to teach at a college or a prep school or public high school or fucking clown college—I need to be with you. I want to be with you.”

Kurt blinked. “Now I can’t stop imagining what Queer Studies class would look like at clown college.” He stopped and swallowed, because his voice had gone husky and soft. He closed his eyes. “I don’t… I can’t stand you giving up so much—”

“We can live in the city—here, or wherever you want to be—and you can finally start your own house—”

“I… I told you—”

“I have a family inheritance I’ve never touched. Take it.”

“Blaine!”

“I’m serious, Kurt.” Blaine got him by the shoulders and rolled him, pressing him into the bed. “I’m not… I never planned to use it; you should use it.” His eyes were warm, earnest, pleading. “Pick your city, make your plans. Hire Unique as your co-designer and then take the world by storm—I want to see that, I want to be there when you do.”

Kurt closed his eyes. He sniffed a little, but quietly.

“Kurt? Are you okay?”

“I have a spoon stuck to my back,” Kurt said in a soft voice, and then Blaine started laughing and his eyes were bright, wet, and he rolled Kurt to the side and then flung the spoon into the hallway.

“I waited for you, Kurt,” Blaine told him solemnly, petting the hair back from his face. “I waited… such a long time, and I’m not—there’s just no way I’m giving you up.” His eyes seemed to hold all the light in the room. “Not unless you tell me to. Unless you tell me you don’t want this.”

Kurt sighed, and slipped his arms around Blaine’s neck. “If I did, I’m pretty sure I’d be lying.” His sticky fingers skidded across Blaine’s bare shoulders, and he took a deep breath and pushed Blaine off of him. “Come on—we can talk about it later. Seriously, Blaine; I need a shower. I feel like a used human lint roller.”

“I sing in the shower,” Blaine admitted to him, crowding him into the bathroom and somehow still managing to be absurdly appealing even though he was a big, sweaty, sticky mess.

“Me too,” Kurt said primly, probably too primly for a sticky, well-fucked naked man, but what the hell. “Know any show tunes?”

Blaine grinned. “All of them.” He leaned in for a kiss, sugar and salt. “Think we can harmonize?”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “Guess we’ll have to find out.”

~~~End~~~

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the lovely poem ‘Difference’ by Stephen Vincent Benet.
> 
> This was an experiment. I really wanted to try writing an adult romance (‘adult’ in the sense of ‘grown-up’, not adult in the sense of porn, because duh of course porn). Romance isn’t traditionally my métier (although goodness knows schmoop and fluff are), so it seemed like a good, if ambitious, stretch for me.
> 
> I’ve also wanted to write about Kurt, the queer community, and effemiphobia for a long time—the problem being (in fiction, anyway), trying to avoid being preachy, and not allowing it to turn into an essay. I’m not entirely sure I successfully avoided these pitfalls, but I tried to, and I am extremely grateful to the gentlemen of my acquaintance who shared their experiences with me, then took the time to read this and give me their feedback, because their input was invaluable. This story is dedicated to them.
> 
> And finally, I got anon prompts for Professor!Blaine and Adult!Virgin!Blaine, and decided to try to combine all that at once. Because I am just that impetuous and foolhardy.
> 
> I hope the end result was enjoyable. Thank you so much for reading!


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